


By The Horns

by CrawleyHouse



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Porn With Very Little Plot, So very very angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:00:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23669533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrawleyHouse/pseuds/CrawleyHouse
Summary: During/After "A Day in the Life"Laura can't wait three days to see Bill again but Carolanne is still there.
Relationships: Carolanne Adama/William Adama, William Adama/Laura Roslin
Kudos: 16





	By The Horns

The whiskey was starting to burn now; hot in his throat as if the skin were exposed. Fingers digging into the expensive frame. He had hated it then, still hated it now, thought the carved detail to be entirely too gaudy. But his wife had loved it. And once upon a time he’d been intensely focused on making her happy. She looked happy… in the photograph… didn’t she?

Lee’s words, his bitter and angry tone, seemed to tinge the photograph with colours he’d never seen before. Maybe her smile was a little forced… he had always though her eyes were laughing. But was she humouring the photographer or her husband? He had always thought that he’d known his wife. He certainly knew just about every detail of her life. So why couldn’t he tell if she had been happy on their wedding day.

“Go ahead, put it away, like you have after every anniversary. Promise me you won’t take it out again.”

Her voice seemed so sharp compared to the woman he’d just spoken too. Harder. Demanding his attention. She seemed to fade in and out of focus, like a radio that couldn’t hold its tune. Laura didn’t demand his attention. She took it effortlessly with the quiet touch of an arm, the upward quirk of her lip, a raised eyebrow behind the frame of her glasses.

“It’d be easier to hate you.” He murmured into his glass. He’d never been a particularly imaginative man but if he concentrated it didn’t taste so bad. She sat down on the couch beside him. Close. If he had wanted to he could have put an arm about her shoulders. But he didn’t want to. Not anymore. “But that would be a lie Carolanne. And there’s been enough of that through our lives.”

She studied him closely.

He’d always felt small under her gaze. Icy and blue, searching for something she never seemed to be able to find. She softened for a moment. Carolanne had never been warm, even with their boys, but soft could be nice. He’d settled for soft.

“We had something, didn’t we?”

She sounded surprisingly small, in need of _his_ assurance. To know that she had not wasted all those years of her life, the apocalypse destroying any chance for her to start again. The only marriage she had ever known had been with him. It had to have been worth something, right?

“Yeah… we had something.” He acquiesced.

It was not a lie. They were beyond that now. And he couldn’t help but lean in as she moved towards him and set her mouth upon his.

It was gentle. Almost tender. Familiar.

But, unbidden, he recalled the last time he’d kissed a woman; a warm wind lifting her hair so he could breathe in the scent of warm vanilla and fresh raspberries. The taste of cheap liquor and smoke on her tongue. He knew next to nothing about that woman. But he’d never been left wondering if her smile was genuine. Her eyes brightened in equal part by mischief and mirth, shaded dark by something that threatened to eat him alive. Tempting him away from the only love he had ever known to the edge of a mountain spring with sedge grass and purple flowers.

As if she had seen his thoughts, she broke away. He thought the guilt alone would keep her with him forever.

“Sometimes suffering isn’t noble, Bill. It’s just sufferance for sufferance sake.” She offered after him as he stood silently to pack away the photograph back into its drawer.

“See you next year.” He murmured, trying politely to dispel the vision of his ex-wife from his quarters and realizing as he did so how ridiculous that was.

She was his figment of his imagination after all. But, true to form, Carolanne was as difficult to dismiss in illusion as she had been in life. She leaned back a little more comfortably into his couch. Right in the center, where Laura liked to sit, and picked up his discarded glass.

“Day’s not over yet, Bill.” And snickered bitterly at the timid knock at his hatch, “For either of us apparently.”

Bill ran a hand over his tired eyes and pushed his fringe back into some semblance of decorum. He was only ever _officially_ off duty. He had managed to fasten four of the buttons on his jacket by the time he swung the hatch inwards to address his visitor and started somewhat when it wasn’t the nervous face of a jumpy private or the resigned expression of a night watchman; not even Saul propped up messily against the bulkhead.

The President of the Colonies stood alone in the corridor without her usual entourage and, somehow, she had even managed to shake off the perpetual shadow that was Tory. But the way she twisted her hands, even as she flashed a smile that sent his stomach to his feet, told him it was Laura who had come to talk. If he were honest with himself, he could have admitted that it was almost always Laura who came to speak with him, and it was rarely the Admiral she sought out.

“My, uh, shuttle was delayed.” She explained, her smile growing nervously, and she shook back her hair as she pulled herself up to her full height. “And I thought, maybe…”

Bill searched her face for a moment; locking eyes. He missed how green they had been down on New Caprica, retreating back to a greyish sage with their retreat back into the dank of their ships. He never knew how she managed to hold such warmth in so cold a colour.

“That we could have that talk?” he asked with a small smirk and held out a hand to help her step over the hatch combing. She always looked far too cute a woman her age had any right to be when she was nervous. Like she was always on the brink of giggles, her cheeks flushed prettily, her breath a little faster in her chest.

Her hand still clasped lightly in his, he led her inside, immensely thankful that the spectre of his ex-wife had vacated her seat.

“Would you mind if I, uh…” and she gestured in the general direction of his bathroom, extricating her hand clumsily from his grip. She seemed to be a much more confident flirt when the risk of seriousness was diminished.

“Of course.” He acquiesced graciously, and watched her move easily through his space, not remembering the precise moment when it seemed that she had always belonged there. He set his empty glass down on the dining table.

“How long are you going to pretend that you don’t love her? That you don’t want her more than you ever wanted me?”

Bill grumbled low in his throat, he was sure at some time in his twenties the idea of entertaining a blonde and a red-head in his bedroom simultaneously would have kicked off one of his better fantasies. Now, several decades and one disastrous marriage later, he’d lost his taste for blondes and the red-head was decidedly off-limits.

His answer hadn’t changed. She had to know that. How could it have? She was still the President; his Commander-in-Chief in actuality, it would be improper beyond comprehension. But when Laura emerged from the bathroom, all thought of Carolanne vanished. Still tall in her high heels and fresh faced from the cold water, Bill had to catch himself. Stripping off her jacket, she beamed at him as if it might distract from the slight red rimming of her eyes. She kicked off her heels like she always did, left haphazardly by his desk, and laid her jacket out carefully over the chair. Humming quietly as she tucked her hair behind her ear. Chain of command existed for a reason. He was just having trouble recalling all of them.

Not when she was so close that he could feel the heat of her skin burning through stark, white of her shirt and every minute shift of her hair conjured up visions of warm meadows and cold streams with a promise of peace in every breath. He pressed a hand to the small of her back, just to let her know he was there, and resisted the urge to curl his fingers around the curve of her waist. Remember the gentle dip of the bones of her hip, the small gasp as a palm kissed the bow of her inner thigh.

Laura leaned back into his touch but did not turn to face him.

“I thought we had certain responsibilities.” She reminded in a low voice, almost teasing, her gaze fixed on the carpet at her feet.

“Yes, we do.” And, unbidden, the tips of his fingers trailed down her arm until he raised gooseflesh on the exposed skin of her neck, “and I consider it a vital responsibility,” shifting the weight of her hair over her shoulder “that we not forget what it is that we are fighting for.”

“And what is that?” her breath hitching in the rapid rise and fall of her chest.

“A chance to live our lives.” He murmured into the sacred space where her shoulders flowed into the long line of her neck.

A soft whimper caught in her throat as Laura melted into his embrace, tilting her head to grant him better access. One broad hand easing around her middle to rest on the slight swell of her belly and pull her more insistently against him. She pushed back until the soft curve of her ass pressed into the definite evidence of just how alive he was and reached up to weave her fingers through the thick waves of his hair. She twisted in his embrace, swallowing his protestation with a languid kiss.

Laura claimed his mouth with a gentle insistence, her fingers tangled deep at the nape of his neck, intent on tasting every inch of him. Her eyes were squeezed tight shut but her eyelashes were damp, belying the moisture beneath. Unable to pull away, Bill splayed his fingers across the expanse of her back, holding her to him even as she pressed herself flush against the solid planes of his chest. He groaned quietly when she couldn’t help but roll her hips against his arousal, rising up on her tiptoes seeking better purchase and moaning softly with an open mouth when she found it.

Bill hitched her up against the table, strong hands secure around the tops of her thighs, stepping one leg between her open knees. He buried his hands in the soft mass of curls and rested his forehead against hers. Cradling her face between his hands he kissed her soundly, lingering at the corner of her mouth, gently on the tip of her nose, lightly on each fluttering eyelid.

“Laura look at me.”

He didn’t know what it was that he wanted to say.

That he wanted to stay with her. Now. Then. Forever. Cylons be damned. That if he could he’d shut the hatch on the universe itself because being with her was never settling; it was coming home. But when she blinked open those earnest pools of ocean green, almost spilling over with a desperate plea for someone to just _see_ her, every eloquent thought slipped out from between his fingers.

“Bill… Touch me, please.” She whispered, guiding his hands down to rest on her hips, slipping her shirt free of the waistband of her skirt, until his fingers fluttered across the bare skin of her abdomen. She whimpered under him as he claimed her mouth again, the three fingers of his right hand skimming up the plane of her stomach to rest against her sternum. Felt her tense as his thumb gently stroked the underwire of her bra. She pushed up off the desk walked him backwards toward his rack.

Her skirt bunched around her hips as she straddled his lap, not quite knowing how she’d gotten there. He was spared from deliberating any further when Laura attacked his mouth with newfound fervour, sucking his tongue into her own, rising up on her knees and moaning loudly when he dragged it along the roof of her mouth.

“Laura.” He husked between breaths as she towered over him, breaking away from her assault on his mouth to breathe in the scent of the heated skin of her chest. She let out a high, pitched whine at the hot breath across her collar bones, pressing her pelvis into his chest until his hands on her hips dragged her back down. She pulled his tanks up and over his head so violently that her nails scraped his side but he paid it no mind, busy as he was divesting her of her own shirt.

He made short work of her bra, tossing it aside as tomorrows problem, sliding his hands up the slope of her ribs to cup her breasts but she brushed him away with enough subtle insistence that he knew not to try again.

“Laura.” He tried but her green eyes were almost black in the yellow light. Lips red and swollen. Her hair tumbled over her bare shoulders with the wild abandon of a conquering huntress. Colour high in her cheeks, splashed down her neck and across the pale, heaving expanse of her chest.

“Frak me.” She ordered in a breathy whisper.

No mortal man could have refused.

Fumbling with the closure of her skirt, he rolled her further into his bed and onto her back.

Bill Adama had seen a great many wondrous things in his life; the sparkling beauty of a golden nebula, the inky black expanse of dead space, the singular majesty of a stellar supernova. And nothing. _Nothing._ Could compare to the vision that was Laura Roslin in that moment; bare breasted in the half-light, eyes glazed with desire, the muted fire of her hair fanned out under her shoulders.

“I love you.” It tumbled out with the murmured sanctity of a prayer, so quiet it could have been a sigh, too loud to take it back. He watched her eyebrows pull together and crease her forehead, something glittering in the corners of her eyes, her lip caught between her teeth.

Bill eased her skirt over her hips, sliding the slick material past her knees until she kicked it away impatiently, shimmying out of her underwear as she went and reaching for his belt. Bill batted her hands away and looped his own behind her knees, pulling her further down the bed to where he was kneeling. Thwarting her attempt to rise up on her elbows with two, thick fingers pressed into her slick folds. Laura fell back into the mattress with a staggered cry, her knees falling open as she ground herself into his palm, fingers plucking frantically at his wrist as he curled his fingers with every thrust.

She rolled her hips with every measured stroke, her silken walls clenching around his digits with each deliberate push into that perfect spot that arched her spine so completely it almost raised her off the bed. He was almost painfully hard watching her writhe under his hands, her cries threatening to become shrieks as he drove her further and further towards the edge.

“Bill…” she gasped, her pitch rising with every breath, reaching blindly for him, “Bill… _please_.”

He eased his pace enough to let her sit up, her eyes smouldering as she undressed him with more efficiency than a drill sergeant. Shucking his pants and boxers down in one fluid movement and dragging him down on top of her as she went. Her fingers twisted almost violently in his hair, and he felt several part company with his scalp as she invited him to devour her. Thrusting her tongue into his mouth as he continued to thrust up into her and pressed his jutting erection hard into her belly. Breathy moans building in her chest and she swallowing the urgent groan she jerked out of him with a gentle squeeze of his balls. With a growl, Bill bit down lightly on her lip, grazing her chin with his teeth as he withdrew his fingers from her wet heat.

Laura cried out in frustration, raising her hips as she chased the loss, and then again as he sheathed himself in one smooth thrust. Her thighs wrapped around his waist, her arms around his neck, Bill grunted into her shoulder as she clenched tight around him, stilling for a moment as he prayed to anyone who would listen not to come right there and then. He pressed soft, open kisses to her collar bone, trailing the tip of his nose along the line of her neck to bury his face in her hair. With his eyes closed, nestled deep in the soft of her skin and the warmth of her touch, surrounded by the scent of the promise of spring and something that was just so uniquely Laura.

She angled her hips and raised up against him and Bill groaned as she took him deeper still. Feeling her breathy gasp tickle his ear as he hit bottom. Sliding his hands down over her smooth curves he pressed his lips to hers. He took her slowly, savouring the taste of her lips, with a long, languid kiss. Pouring every apology for every argument into each measured stroke, every word he should have said in the feather light touch of his fingertips against her cheek, every emotion from their first kiss to this one in the heat in the space between them until the weight of it all threatened to steal the breath from her lungs.

“I love you.”

The rising pants of Laura’s breath were fast becoming keening moans, her hips rolling rhythmically as she took all of him again and again but his pace was faltering under the quivering contractions of her tight heat and the primal sounds dragged from the back of her throat. He raised her knee up over his shoulder and her eyes snapped open as he sank to the hilt, pounding into her until her moans gave way to a strangled scream. Her head thrown back, convulsing in frantic spasms around his length as her orgasm ripped through every nerve. Rising in wave after wave until it dragged him down with her.

He rolled towards the wall, not wanting to crush her, but gathered her in his arms all the same, tucking his chin over her shoulder, comforted by the steady rise and fall of her chest and the warm smell of her while his breathing levelled out.

Bill jerked to find the space beside him empty, not aware he had even been asleep until he saw Laura braced against the desk, fully dressed, slipping back into her shoes. She paused when she caught him looking at her.

“I, uh… I should go… I have a, uh, Captain’s meeting first thing…” she murmured, hurriedly. Tucking her tousled hair behind her ears as best she could, collecting her jacket from the chair and making her way to the hatch. She paused halfway, as if she had forgotten something, reached for his outstretched hand; still resting in the space she had been, and kissed his cheek almost guiltily. And disappeared with the faint squeal of metal, leaving nothing to show she’d been there at all but for five crescent shaped marks on each shoulder and the scent of spring on his pillow. 

“Oh the things we say…” a dispassionate voice echoed from the space on the couch, “once we’ve got what we desired.”

**Author's Note:**

> This kind of grew in a different direction as I was writing it…  
> I love A Day in the Life even though I don’t think it’s a fantastic episode and had a fun little idea about Laura not being able to wait those three days they talked about and having a little jealous Head Carolanne scenario BUT… I was always under the impression that Laura knew her cancer was back long before we heard about it in Crossroads, and I have a feeling her “trip to the gym” might have been a trip to Doc Cottle. This is what happens when these two ideas collide apparently.  
> I didn't mean for it to be this angsty I swear. (I also posted this at 4am so while I did edit myself I reserve the right to have mistakes and they are all my own)


End file.
